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Monthly Archives: August 2010

Events happen in your life that whiz past. Some you’re only briefly aware of, and others make you stop and watch. Then there are events that stop you, and make you pay attention to them. You ignore those events at your peril.

I spent tonight as I do most nights cuddling my little man to sleep. It’s one of those things we do, and it’s one of the great times of my day. Days that have been shitty all melt away as I spend anywhere from 5mins to 30mins just lying there, in the dark, with my son next to me. Tonight was the night that I realised, with startling clarity, exactly what was important to me in my life.

I’ve spent 20years of my life trying to make other people do work in a better way. I’ve covered for incompetent morons, I’ve spent countless thousands of hours trying to get organisations to understand why when I say something, it’s worth listening to. Now, I just don’t give a fuck. The people who don’t understand why shitty requirements end up with shitty software – you know what – you just keep writing those shitty requirements and I’ll just nod. No unit tests? Sure, you have a nice time there, I hope it doesn’t hurt you too much. Shitty code with cyclomatic complexity through the roof? Grats – at least you can use an IDE, your mum must be so proud you ignorant fuck.

It’s just not worth my energy dealing with you, and your shitty defensive attitudes about how you have to do it this way because there’s no other option. I’m just going to smile and say thank you, and then think again about how I’m going to go home tonight and cuddle the most important thing in the world.

I feel like I’m selling out – but you know what, after 20years of fighting the good fight, I’ve not had a single organisation say to me “thanks Jon, you really made a difference”. I’ve done it for me, for my colleagues and mostly for the people I try to mentor. No longer are you going to leech my energy like vampires, I’m going to be able to save that for my son.

Those people who want to learn a better way, and those people who ask me for help – you’re always welcome, and I’ll spend time and energy with you, because you care. The rest of you, wear your warm badge of ignorance with pride, march on down that lane of stupidity and I hope you get hit by a car.

I should add to this, that it’s not my current organisation that is bad, or even the worst in this respect, it’s just that some time in the last year I grew up, and don’t want to do things that are bad for me any more.

Maybe one day I’ll find an organisation that doesn’t clothe itself in ignorance, one that treats people like they’re trying to help, not hinder and when I do, I’ll blog long and hard about that because life is too short, and love is too important to be hindered by spending time being unappreciated.

I was having a chat with a colleague today about the role I’m playing on his project. We were discussing the sorts of things that trouble him, and what I can do to help. I’ve been musing on the “all architects suck ass” thing for a while, because I know that’s not true, and really in response to him I said;

“It’s not my responsibility to deliver your project, but it’s my responsibility to make sure _you_ can deliver your project.”

That’s my take on what my job is about. There are projects to be delivered, there are issues that are external to a project, and it’s my job to make sure they go away and the project can be delivered appropriately.